Two months in Kruger

November was a really hectic month and we got a taste of what a week of 105 degree heat feels like. We worked for a couple weeks in the central part of the park, near Satara restcamp, raising 24 rain-out shelters within a big fenced area. The fence is to keep out the animals, but even though the outer fence is 10 feet high, giraffes and zebra can still leap over it to get inside….park staff have to shoo them out every so often. The rain-out shelters are designed to collect half the rainfall that falls on the plot and store it in a barrel. When the barrel reaches a certain level, it discharges all the water onto the plot through irrigation tubing. The goal is to see what effect less frequent, but more intense, rainstorms (as predicted in global warming models) will have on the savanna vegetation composition. We also spent a lot of time digging deep holes to place water moisture and water potential sensors….what fun!
Lauren arrived in Kruger on 19-November and was picked up at the airport and delivered right into the field (and 100 degree heat) and put to work….thrown right into the fire! She arrived on the first day of our experimental water study, and her first two weeks in the park found us very very busy. Our main experiment consists of injecting deuterated (i.e. magically labeled) water into the soil at 4 different depths at 4 different times of the year. Injecting the water into our plots is no picnic and entails the pounding of 101 holes in some hard soil and fighting with long syringes. After the plot has been injected, we spend the next 5-7 days collecting grass, tree, and soil samples within a 5 m radius to determine which species are using the water at different depths. We’ll spend many weeks in a laboratory here in the Park processing the samples in order to extract stem water (and soil water) for analysis on a mass spectrometer in Cape Town. The stem water extraction is a neat little process involving vacuum lines, aluminum blocks, blow torches, a hot plate, and copious liquid nitrogen (mad science!). Lauren and I have been doing this the past 5 days and it seems to be working o.k., and we get to wear some really stylish glasses when using the torch.
The wildlife viewing continues to be amazing. We’ve been seeing rhinos nearly every day on our hour “commute” to the field site, and finally saw a cheetah, although it was far away. There are only 200 or so estimated in the Park, so it was still a lucky sighting. We’ve had some really great lion sightings, including a couple females at an antelope kill and a pair of big males lounging in the shade on a hot day. Going out to do fieldwork with an armed guard is quite a new experience. One day we started walking towards our plot and heard some loud and aggressive growling which made us quite uneasy (which I believe was precisely the intended effect). We saw a blur of movement and 4 wild dogs fled the scene….yikes. The next day we had to take a circuitous route to our plot to avoid two big white rhinos and a baby rhino munching grass amidst our study site. That same morning we were busily at work and heard some clear “roar-type” sounds from afar. Our fearless guard, Thomas, said “I think they are lions for sure, but I do not know how far away they are”, which didn’t particularly make us feel secure. Thomas seemed nonchalant about all these encounters and claims to have never fired his rifle while out with researchers in the 20+ years he’s worked in the Park. Elephants, zebras, buffalo, giraffes, monkeys, baboons, and all kinds of antelope are all over the place, and we spent an hour watching hippos and crocs go about their business on the Letaba River from a cool hide. Birds are everywhere and we saw three shrike species within a km of each other on one road (two were of the Lanius genus). We also watched a grey hornbill feeding its mate and offspring in a nest cavity. This was awesome because hornbills, after selecting a nest cavity, work together to enclose the female and her eggs inside. They seal up the cavity entrance with food/dung/etc, leaving only a small slit. The female stays there until her chick hatches and is nearly ready to leave -- up to several months! This behavior keeps the nest safe from predators as she incubates her young. During this time, the male feeds her through a small slit in the nest opening. Shane thought this was cool as hell, but Lauren wasn’t so crazy about the whole idea, but it was still neat to watch. Our tent is good and the vervet monkeys continue to visit daily. While the fig tree outside our tent was ripe, bushbabies were also visiting each night to gorge on figs. They are awesome critters. Some other great things about SAfrica are you can buy a big bag of 16 avocadoes for the equivalent of $3 from roadside vendors and there are lots of neat potato chip flavors, like “BBQ Steer Rib” and “Beef”. We went to our first poitje last night, which means “small pot,” although the two pots at this gathering appeared quite large. We sampled some delicious curry stews while getting to know many of the park staff and visiting researchers….a fun and lively bunch! Just before posting this, we went out for a quick evening game drive and got to witness an elephant chasing some guinea fowl around, trumpeting at them, just for the fun of it. He was also playing soccer with a rock, an impressive feat using all four legs! Just a typical Kruger day…

---

---

---